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AGP01: Josef Anton Riedl

by: Josef Anton Riedl

Avant Garde Project

Topics: agp, electronic, experimental, electroacoustic

The first AGP installment features the compositions of Josef Anton Riedl. A few tracks are entirely
electronic but most are electroacoustic, involving sounds produced by a number of sources. In a
few tracks, recordings are made as performers produce sounds by manipulating paper, glass,
water, etc., and then another layer of sound is added as the same performers respond to the
previously recorded sounds. The acoustic recordings are astonishing in their clarity and intimacy,
and the timbres produced by these objects are often quite unexpected.

The first track comes from volume 8 of Zeitgenössische Musik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
(Bestellnummer DMR 1022-1024). It was recorded by Saarländischen Rundfunks in 1982 and
features Lorenzo Ferrero, Stefan Gabanyi, Johannes Göhl, Michael Hirsch, Robyn Schulkowsky,
Florian Tielebier-Langenscheidt. The group was conducted by Josef Anton Riedl. The remaining
tracks make up Wergo release WER 60066. The performers include Simone Rist and Nicolaus A.
Huber (track 2), Mike Lewis and Michael W. Ranta (track 4), and Johannes Göhl (track 9). The
included text file is a transcription of the liner notes from both releases, and contains biographical
material on the composer as well as descriptions of individual compositions.

Notes

The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you've never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs.